Marriage provides feeling of security for same-sex couples

Jun. 14, 2014

Tomek Bohaczek and Will Boyd-Bohaczek display their wedding rings April 23, 2014 outside the Cook County Courthouse. / Photo courtesy of Tomek Bohaczek

Will Boyd-Bohaczek, front, and Tomek Bohaczek, back, are married in April at the Cook County Courthouse in Chicago. / Photo courtesy of Tomek Bohaczek

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When Tomek Bohaczek married his best friend at an emotional ceremony in April, all six people in the courtroom, including the judge who performed the ceremony, cheered, and the best man wiped tears from his eyes.

But for the next six weeks, the couple’s joy was dampened by the knowledge that their marriage wasn’t legal in Wisconsin because both spouses are men. That all changed June 6, when U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb struck down the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

Bohaczek, a 43-year-old shift manager at Walmart, and Will Boyd-Bohaczek, a 33-year-old sales representative, met online early last year when Will lived in Wausau and Tomek lived in Peshtigo. Weeks after they began to chat online, the two met in person. In December, when Tomek proposed, Will eagerly accepted.

The couple couldn’t legally marry in Wisconsin, so they planned an intimate ceremony in Illinois, where same-sex marriage became legal in November. They married at the Cook County Courthouse and celebrated with an authentic Polish meal at an upscale Chicago restaurant before starting their new life together in Peshtigo.

The ceremony, Bohaczek said, was magical. But the June 6 judge’s ruling made it all feel real.

“To have our marriage recognized in our home state means we are equal and not second-class citizens,” said Bohaczek, the son of Polish immigrants. “Domestic partnership is not the same.”

Until this month, the couple’s options were few, because they both live in Wisconsin, essentially an island surrounded by states that have already legalized same-sex marriage laws.

The issue is far from settled; late Friday afternoon, Crabb ordered a temporary halt to same-sex marriages until higher courts rule on the case.

Few protections and benefits

Domestic partnership gives couples only about 25 percent of the rights and protections of marriage, said Tamara Packard, a Madison-based attorney who works largely in the area of employment and civil rights litigation. She also has performed pro bono work for the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Wisconsin, the organization challenging the same-sex marriage ban. Packard was part of the team appointed by former Gov. Jim Doyle to help uphold the state’s Domestic Partner Registry for same-sex couples, which was established in 2009.

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“A domestic partnership does nothing for the thousand or so federal rights that come with marriage. Tax benefits are probably the biggest,” Packard said.

Domestic partners in Wisconsin can file wrongful death lawsuits when a partner dies and collect compensation for partners who are crime victims, according to a June 2011 Dane County Circuit Court ruling that upheld the state’s Domestic Partnership Registry. A domestic partner, once registered, is protected from eviction when the other partner is on active duty in the Wisconsin National Guard. They are also allowed visitation rights when a partner is hospitalized or in a long-term care facility. But these rights are hardly unique.

“The vast majority of rights provided to domestic partners are rights that the law also grants to parents, children, family members and sometimes close friends,” Dane County Circuit Judge Daniel Moeser wrote in his 53-page opinion. “The state does not recognize domestic partnership in a way that even remotely resembles how the state recognizes marriage.”

Married couples can file jointly on their income tax returns, Packard said, but the federal government considers people in a domestic partnership as single. For people who work for the federal government — including the military — the implications can be substantial. Domestic partners are also not allowed to collect social security benefits when a partner dies, Packard said.

“There’s a huge bunch of protections that come with being married,” Packard said. “Domestic partnerships don’t even come close.”

For Bohaczek, Crabb’s ruling has an even greater impact than the legal protections he will enjoy with Will as a married couple: a spiritual one.

“It’s about the symbolic meaning of marriage and our wedding,” Bohazcek said. “Our best friend was the best man. The judge was amazing. She said, ‘This is a couple that is gonna last.’ At that moment it felt like our relationship moved to a higher level. That’s what matters most, really.”

A tidal wave of change

Crabb’s ruling is one of a flood of court decisions legalizing same-sex marriage since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act in June 2013. In the past 12 months, more than 70 lawsuits have been filed nationwide by the American Civil Liberties Union and couples who seek the same legal rights as their married heterosexual counterparts.

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Don Downs, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who focuses largely on constitutional law, said the potential change in policy mirrors a change in public opinion, both statewide and nationwide. Gallup polls taken annually show support for same-sex marriage has more than doubled since 1996, and a Marquette University poll taken in May shows 59 percent of Wisconsin residents polled think the state’s same-sex marriage ban should be repealed.

“There has been kind of this groundswell of support. Crabb’s decision is the most recent step in this direction,” Downs said.

Crabb’s decision caused controversy and confusion as county officials across the state grappled with whether or not to issue licenses to same-sex couples. By Friday afternoon, all but about a dozen of the state’s 72 counties began issuing licenses —at least, temporarily — despite Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen’s statement, issued last week, urging all state and local officials to follow Wisconsin’s marriage law “unless and until the court enjoins that law.”

Rocky road to acceptance

Bohaczek said he comes from a family of Holocaust survivors with very strict views on marriage. To Bohaczek’s family, the couple is nothing more than friends and roommates.

Bohaczek has spoken to his father just once since the wedding. No family members attended the same-sex wedding ceremony in Chicago.

“I have had family members tell us to just stay away,” Bohaczek said.

Though they did not attend the wedding either, Will’s family is supportive while friends and work associates have been kind, Bohaczek said. At the Peshtigo Cafe, a favorite lunch spot, the couple is always welcomed warmly by the cafe owner, and the Peshtigo community as a whole has been more than accepting, Bohaczek said.

“We are the same as people in the straight community,” Bohaczek said. “We have the same hopes, the same dreams. We have love.”

One big concern for Bohaczek is the possibility that his marriage — though legal today — will somehow be deemed invalid if same-sex marriage is later declared illegal in Wisconsin. But Packard said there is legal precedent that shows Bohaczek’s worries are unfounded.

“Nine years ago in New Mexico, there was a small window of opportunity in which same-sex couples were married,” Packard said. “Those couples are still legally married today.”

In an email sent Wednesday to Gannett Wisconsin Media, Dana Brueck, communications director for Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, suggested the answers are not so clear.

“To represent that they are settled questions is to misrepresent the facts and posture of this pending case,” Brueck wrote.

For now, Bohaczek said, he and his husband are both holding their breath while the issue of same-sex marriage in Wisconsin makes its way through the court system — a process that could take months and could ultimately land in the hands of U.S. Supreme Court justices.

“Our biggest hope is that in a few more decades people will look back at this historical moment in time and wonder what the fuss was all about,” Bohaczek said. “Our dreams have already come true.”